Poll: Do you think that President Bush should be impeached?

President Bush is a dipshit of the highest order. He's ruining our country from both at home and abroad. But unless we find a truly smoking gun, there's not a good way to go about it.

I do wish we have a system that had a "no confidence" clause for situations like this, where there was a way to force a new election if the president hasn't necessarily committed a crime, but is just doing a terrible job. This would at least give the president a motivation to represent the people who elected him, especially in their second term.

That's pretty much how I feel especially after the totally partisan impeachment of Clinton. You shouldn't get impeached for being a bad president or making bad decisions.

On the other hand Bush did order thousands of illegal wiretaps. This is a federal crime. One of the charges of Nixon when he was facing impeachment was ordering 17 wiretaps; Bush ordered thousands. The difference though is that Nixon's were solely for his personal gain. Now if we discovered that among the thousands of wiretaps that were ordered some were on political opponents I'd say the case for impeachment would be clear. When I submitted this poll I was sure I'd vote "no." This Op Ed column in yesterday's NY Times got me to switch my vote to "I wish it were that simple; Bush is Not Above the Law by James Bamford

President Bush is a dipshit of the highest order. He's ruining our country from both at home and abroad. But unless we find a truly smoking gun, there's not a good way to go about it.

Yeah, because sadly, violating the Constitution is no longer good enough for impeachment since the Congress violates it on an almost daily basis.  I mean, even though it was also politically motivated, Clinton was impeached for attempting to subvert the judicial system (committing perjury).  As you said, conducting warantless wiretaps, or rifling through Americans' bank records without due process is far beyond perjury.  If impeachment was good enough for Clinton, Bush has earned an impeachment in spades.

Again, too bad impeachment is viewed more as a political tool than enforcing rule of law.

Beyond a no-confidence vote, which I'm not sure how that would work in our system of government, what we really need is multiple parties in congress, not just two.  Especially two that are rapidly becoming indistinguishable in principle and are both obsessed with doing whatever will keep them in power.

So how is breaking the law not a "smoking gun"?  The man authorized wiretaps on american citizens without a warrant.  Pretty simple.  Its illegal.  The man isn't above the law.  Infact, last time I checked, committing a federal crime, like this, is an impeachable offense.  Granted, if he actually used the FISA court process he could do this but only up to 3 days.. and he'd have to justify it to a court after that.  He hasn't bothered with this onerous process because it might "let terrorists" escape or some such garbage.  Beyond that, you might actually find out who he's spying on.. which would of course, let the terrorists win. 

No if he could be impeached for being a bad president, he wouldn't have lasted past 9/11 or Iraq or Katrina.. but sadly, impeachment is saved for presidents who get blow jobs.

I agree that he broke the law there, and that it's an impeachable offense, I just don't know if we'd be able to make it stick. It's such a fuzzy area that there would probably be ways to weasel out of it, and a failed impeachment process would reflect fairly poorly on the Democrats. I just think we're better off sitting out the last two years and sweeping the elections in '08 with the bumbles of Bush fresh in the minds of people.

And yeah, the words "President Cheney" terrify me. :-/

costofwar.com/index.html

If we impeach Bush, Cheney becomes President. Who wants that?

Any impeachable offense that Bush did Cheney is part of so we'd have President Pelosi.

Well you'd have to impeach Cheney separately though.

And Byrd is President Pro-Tempore of the Senate.  So we're pretty much screwed all the way down the chain of succession.

Yes you would but I assumed that once they impeached Bush they'd get to Cheney next. Now actually I'd be very happy with President Pelosi.

That being said I don't think they should do it unless they discover some proof of greater malfeasance than we know about now.

How about lying to start a war? How about fabricating evidence about weapons of mass destruction?

Or how about Bush attempting to mow down a row of reporters with a lawnmower?

*stifles a laugh*  Ok, that's kinda funny actually. 

That *is* pretty funny. But, it's not a lawnmower.

That's a pretty huge piece of machinery.